Lux Lucet

Summary:

This section breaks down into four main headings.

    I. The origins of the debate over progress (37).

    II. A historical sketch of the development of the idea of progress (37-39).

    III. A discussion of the main elements of the philosophy of progress (39-40).

    IV. A review of the main arguments used to establish progress as a law of history (40-41).

Years ago during a freshman level history class in college, a professor of mine made the point that the ancient Greeks had a cyclical view of history. For them, history was just a repetition of the same cycles over and over, much like the seasons. At the time, I thought it was among the most foolish things I’d ever heard. I was thoroughly steeped in the idea of history as progress. These many years later, I still don’t agree with the cyclical view, though I can at least understand why an intelligent person might take that position.

Of course, the Bible teaches that history will have an end, and that end was declared by God before the creation of the world. History, far from being a random series of events, has a purpose, which will culminate when Christ returns to judge the world in righteousness. In that sense the idea of progress in history is perfectly consonant with Christianity. But this is not the type of progress Clark has in view in this section. The philosophy of progress discussed here is of the purely secular sort.

The progress discussed here is the secular view. Clark argues that the Middle Ages, focused as they were on contemplation, showed little interest in worldly progress. This changed with the coming of such thinkers as Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza.

In this section, Clark mentions a book published in 1770 titled The Year 2440 by French author Louis-Sébastian Mercier. Not being familiar with this prior to reading about it in Clark, I found it interesting to think that authors in the late 18th century were writing about the distant future. I had supposed futuristic writing that was reserved for later periods.

I was also struck by the totalitarian views expressed of these men. According to Clark, Mercier argued that, “Economic prosperity is maintained because government officials estimate the capacities of each adult and assign employment on that basis.” On the surface, at least, that seems not all that different from what Aldus Huxley envisioned in The Brave New World. It’s worth noting, too, that it was the progressives of the early 20th century whose faith in government went a long way toward undermining liberty in the US. Could there be some relationship between the ideas espoused during the Progressive Era in the US and the philosophy of progress as discussed by Clark?

Beginning his discussion of the elements of the theory of progress, Clark makes the following key point,

“Negatively, progress is the denial of divine Providence; or, positively, progress is a natural process. It was thought that if God exercised control over the affairs of men, if therefore he could cause mankind to retrogress, or, if as is plainly taught in the Bible, he might bring the world to an end, there could be no guarantee of indefinite amelioration. Accordingly, progress must be a natural process. Whatever factors in nature it may depend upon, it cannot depend on the will of a Supreme Being” (CVMT, p.39).

Second, this natural process, “must occur in all spheres of human interest.” In addition to the development of scientific knowledge, so too must there be moral improvement. The philosophical views of one era are replaced by the superior views of subsequent times, which themselves will give way to future advances.

A third and final element of progress is that it must be, “necessary and inevitable.” Not only is progress beyond the control of God, man himself is passive. Progress is a law of nature, and, “Like other laws of nature, continuous improvement must be taken as a part of the order of things.”

Clark concludes his discussion of the philosophy of progress by putting to the test the assertion that progress is the law of history its proponents claim. He gives us three main causes that have been advanced by defenders of progress in the attempt to make this case: scientific knowledge, political or social planning, and biological evolution.

Clark dismisses the scientific argument by pointing out that science can be used for evil just as easily as for good. He also mentions a second reason why scientific knowledge is unsatisfactory as a defense of progress: “it is only a partial manifestation of a more general cause.” If progress is the natural, inevitable process its defenders say it is, how can we square this idea with the loss of scientific knowledge that took place after the fall of the Western Roman Empire? If scientific knowledge can regress, how can it be the cause of continuous progress?

Clark ends his discussion of scientific knowledge as the cause of progress by making the comment, “Unless an underlying cause can be found, in biology perhaps, this explanation (scientific knowledge) of progress begs the question.” Clark often accuses his philosophical opponents of this error, so it’s worth looking at in a little detail. What does it mean to beg the question? Not what most people think. You might hear someone make a statement such as, “If the team fires the manager, it begs the question, whom will they hire to replace him?” This is incorrect. The proper way of making this statement is to say, “If the team fires the manager, it raises the question, whom will they hire to replace him?”

Begging the question means to assume what needs to be proven. In the context of Clark’s argument, it means that those who rest their case for necessary and inevitable natural progress on the notion that scientific knowledge always increases have assumed, but not demonstrated, that this is the case. They have begged the question.

Clark next turns his guns on political and social planning. The assumption held by both the 18th century French planners and those of later times was that human nature is malleable. Give the planners the authority, so the theory goes, to mold people, and the result will be a new and better type of person. But Clark raises the objection that planning can be used to bring about bad results as well as good ones. And the history of centrally planned tyrannies during the 20th century shows that this is not an idle concern.

Clark doesn’t raise the point here, but there is the further question of whether governments, even those with the best of intentions, ought to be in the central planning, human nature changing business in the first place. Scripture clearly restricts the role of government to a degree that it likely would render impossible the sort of central planning envisioned by Mercier and others. But this discussion will have to wait, as it is more suited to the topic of politics.

The final cause asserted to establish progress as a law of history is evolution. It’s remarkable some of the places Darwinism rears its head, influencing the thought in disciplines seemingly far removed from biology. Clark lays out two assumptions that undergird the progress as result of evolution argument: first that morality has survival value and second, that acquired moral characteristics are inherited. Clark dismisses these assumptions by pointing out that biologists do no generally accept that acquired physical characteristics are inherited, and that this would likely hold true for acquired moral characteristics as well. Further, he says, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that ruthlessness may have more survival value than a tendency toward peace.

Now someone may read Clark’s arguments here and object that he is no using Scripture to refute the claims. After all, isn’t Clark supposed to be a Christian thinker, and no merely a Christian thinker, but one who developed the practice of applying the Bible to all areas of life, including philosophical problems? Why is Clark citing the opinions of biologists and not citing Scripture? The answer is that Clark is making an extended ad hominem argument. An ad hominem argument, is where one assumes his opponents premises and shows that those assumptions logically lead to a conclusion other than what is being proposed. Here, Clark has assumed the evolutionary naturalism of his opponents – remember, those who claim progress is a law of history reject divine providence and argue instead that progress is a natural process, see paragraph 3 on page 39 – and showed that it fails to support their conclusion that progress is a law of history. Clark has not yet attempted to establish a Biblical view of history. He will do that later. At this point, however, he is content to lay waste the arguments of the secularists.

Also, please note how Clark deals with a final evolutionist defense, the one that argues that short-term results – and short-term for the evolutionists means centuries – do not prove they are wrong, because long-term evolution will produce the results they claim. Clark concludes that this is a petitio principii, which means begging the question in Latin. The evolutionists assume what they need to prove.

Clark further undermines the evolutionist argument for progress by pointing out that there is no evidence that blind evolution aimed at man in the first place and no evolutionary basis to claim that man is better than any other species. Many members of the animal kingdom far surpass man in size, strength, speed, skin thickness, etc. Perhaps these species are really the more advanced life forms. And some of the more radical green organizations make this very argument, referring to the notion that man has special rights vis-a-vis the animal kingdom as speciesism.

As if his proceeding demolition of the secular concept of progress were not enough, Clark closes this section with one final, devastating argument. Writes Clark,

There is one final and far-reaching objection to the theory of progress. Bury mentions it at the end of his book, but shies away from it. The objection lies in the fact that the theory of progress requires the idea of progress to progress….In other words, if progress is the law of history, if our moral and intellectual baggage is superior to that of antiquity; and if our society and our ideas are to grow into something better and vastly different; if our imagination is to evolve to a degree not now imaginable; if all the old concepts which served their time well are to be replaced by new and better concepts, does it not follow that the theory of progress will be discarded as a eighteenth- and nineteenth-century notion, which no doubt served it age well, but which will then be antiquated and untrue?

Could it be that the best contemporary evidence of progress is a growing disbelief in “progress”?

As with his refutation of skepticism – the skeptic claims that knowledge is impossible, which is itself a claim to know, please see pp.26, 27 for Clark’s discussion – with pristine logic Clark has pointed out the absurd, that is to say, the self-refuting nature of the theory of progress. This is called a reductio ad absurdum, where one shows his opponents position violates the coherence theory of truth, which holds that for a statement or a philosophical system to be true, it must be logically consistent. For more on this, please see page 27 or CVMT for Clark’s discussion of the coherence theory of truth.